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Call Each River Jordan - Ralph Peters

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ONE

I REMEMBER THE BURNING MEN. WOUNDED, AND caught like the damned at the reckoning. In brush and bramble lit by battle’s sparks. They cried for help or death, for wives and mothers. Some begged God’s mercy, while their fellows cursed. They smelled sweet. It is a scent no man forgets, once it has filled his nose. The fragrance of the pyre. The flames crept up and over stranded souls. Turning men into a twist of fire. Wild hands withered black. Uniforms burn quicker than the flesh, but hair blazes. Boys wore crowns of flame. That day I understood the pain of martyrs.

They burned in a poor-struck land, above a river. I have known many rivers. And many burnings. The heathen roasts the living wife along with her dead master. And when they burned the niggers dead of cholera, in great piles, you would have thought the heavens scorched with sugar. The Hindoo and the Musselman burned, and here and there a Christian gone astray. A rancid sweetness will connote the damned. It clings.

That muddy river made me think of India. But this was in America, and now, and white men burned.

I saw them in the smoke but yards away each time I shouldered up to aim and shoot. Those hit in the legs crawled on their elbows, but could not get beyond the spreading flames. Some raised themselves enough to catch a ball. I fired and bent to load and heard their screams.

A man beside me rose to make a rescue. I yanked him down. Another boy in blue, torn by the cries, ran out to help. Ignoring my command. He fell to no effect, and burned himself. In that storm of lead and hate and heat. I gave them the devil then, the lads I had gathered from the ruins of a dozen regiments, and hoped they heard me through the crash of battle. I shouted that their duty was to fight, and damn the rest.

Thus I became a judge of life and death. For battle has to do with here and now, and I would waste no life where no hope lay. That is the soldier in me, a dreadful thing. I shall need much forgiveness. But let that bide.

The men in gray and rags rushed on and fell. Embers of spent wadding spread the fires. The damned in Hell will sound like burning boys. Our boys and theirs. For that is war. There was no succor, and death gleaned those who stood in the wrath of the day. If I shrieked in your ear in your safe parlor, it would mean little, for no art tells the agony of such. My words are shreds of nothing. Those men between the lines died hard and lonely. As lonely as Christ. I had heard screams before, of course, of brown men and of wounded friends in scarlet or in khaki, but never knew a chorus such as this. Dozens burned alive. Dozens and tens of dozens. A multitude. Crying.

And that was Shiloh.

THEY COULD NOT BUDGE US so they brought up guns. I heard the horses first, the whinnies of the teams. Then came the harsh commands and grump of muzzles, the sharp report of powder packed and lit. I could not see the cannon for the smoke. But branches broke and fell about our legs, and splinters killed. I thought I heard the bark of Whitworths in battery, recalling sepoys maddened with rebellion.

In all my years of marching, fear marched with me. But there is a fear that vanquishes itself, and makes of man a brutal, killing beast.

The cannoneers lowered their aim. Blasting through our feeble scraps of cover.

We were a pack of shrunken regiments, of companies pared down to ten and less. I knew no names, and pennants there were none. Any flag raised up fell back again. Men lay close, almost atop one another, dying by strangers. I worked my rifle like a common soldier.

The Rebels used the trees. Feeling for a gap beyond our flank. And they would find one. For never was a battle more confused. A broken army fought a breaking one. All combat is a boiling stew of chaos. But this fight was disordered through and through.

I should have been away from all such doings, as safe as this, our fragile life, allows. I meant to disembark five miles downriver, at General Grant’s headquarters. I was no longer called to fields of battle. Not since my misfortune at Bull Run. No, I had come upon a criminal matter, at Washington’s alarm. Twas murder of a sort so sensitive that telegraphic code would not suffice to tell the half of what I needed to know. They only said it was an urgent crime that might disturb the nation and our cause.

Dear God, what crime is greater than a war?

The steamboat that carried me docked at the breakfast hour. Below a town set on the eastern bluff. A high, white house shone above a cloud of tents. That would be headquarters, and no question. For generals do not like to sleep in shanties. But the mansion was no happy place that morning.

Staff men on the bluff stared south and pointed. Ignoring my vessel’s arrival, with its whistle, bulk and smoke. I had heard guns along the Tennessee and knew a scrap had gotten underway. I was dismayed, for this was on a Sunday, and that was brazen insult to the Lord. But now I saw the matter was not planned.

Oh, not by us.

Upon the mansion’s sloping lawn, an officer too stout to be less than a colonel cursed to astound. Profanity may be weakness, but his oaths roared above the grumbling boilers, above the splashing wheels and creak of ropes. You would have heard that fellow in a battle, but now his wind was wasted on his peers. A signals man waved madly from a roof.

I took my Colt and left my bag and jumped into a smaller boat just parting. Heading toward the fight. That is where an officer must go, see. No matter what his task on other days. I had naught else but purse and pocket Testament, a thing of solace indispensable, and last the orders folded in my pocket. I leaned upon my cane, skin all a-prickle, nose toward the clapping of the guns.

The gentlemen aboard paid me no mind, for I am not impressive at a glance. And they had other matters on their minds.

There’s going to be hell to pay, an unshaven major declared, repeating it over and over. "There’s just going to be hell to pay . . ."

I half thought they would paddle with their hands. To reach the field of death a little sooner. They were distraught and heedless, if well-meaning. Surprise is hard in war, and good men fail.

It took me back, unwilling, to the Mutiny, and desperate days when time was scarce as powder. Urgent and shocked, we marched on bloody Delhi. Slogging through hot nights, because the sun killed white men in a hurry. With sepoys and sowars grim to our front, and cholera in our baggage. I remembered Molloy singing, to mask the groans of sick men in the wagons, and the corpses blue by morning, and black before we got them in their graves. I was a sergeant then, and should have shut him up to show respect. For there were officers among the sick. But I was hard, and hummed along myself. Our jokes grew cruel. We were glad of the fight when it come, and showed the poor buggers no mercy. When they tried to surrender, we gave them our steel, and washed the Subzeeh Mundee with their blood. Of course, we kept their holy men for hanging. Whenever we had rope.

Memory is the curse of Cain and soldiers.

They called our destination Pittsburg Landing. But no name tells the shame of what we found. We washed down the cool of the river, with the current brown and quick and spiked with branches. Blossoms pinked the bluffs. The sun was up all lovely, I remember, as befits a proper April Sunday. But nature is a harlot in her beauty.

Have you ever seen a side of beef all maggots? A crawling thing, fit to turn the gut? That was our welcome on the riverbank.

The western shoreline festered. With cowards. Thousands had sought refuge by the water. They crammed the little space below the bluff. A shameful swarm of blue they made, speckled with the red of undergarments and shirts billowing like flags of surrender. Runaways and skulkers to a man. Cringing in the mud. Never had I seen such a filthy quitting. Even natives fight to save themselves.

Bull Run was a triumph by compare.

It looked as if our army had dissolved. Yet cannon sounded thick beyond the landing. A fight there was, a real one, some miles distant.

We put in to shouts of disaster and warnings of enemy legions. Our generals were dead, deserters cried, and the Rebels took no prisoners. But that was tosh. Americans had no stomach for a massacre, and I prayed they never would gain one. Surrendering was honored, more or less. The meanness comes when skins have different colors. Then men will kill and think it worth the sweat.

The sailor folk raised axes, clubs and pistols to keep our boat from being overrun. Men, half-naked, splashed into the river. As if it were the Jordan. A few swam out in the muddy stream, then disappeared, unable to cross over. Men begged and offered gold to come on board. A lieutenant colonel, splashing in an eddy, wailed that his brother was a Congress fellow, insisting that his life must be protected. He offered up his watch-chain, then the watch.

Now I have seen fear, and felt it, but there is no greater danger for an army than panic. No plague spreads so fast, or kills so surely. In battle, he survives who stands and fights. The man who runs will be cut down and slain. But we are not creatures of sense, and cannot be told. That is why a soldier must be trained. For running is the impulse of our hearts.

That day they ran, the good men after bad. I felt the shock and wonder of my boatmates, for they were young and green as Gwent themselves. Bleating like lambs in their newness. Well, they would learn what war was soon enough.

I jumped down in the muck and started marching. Limping up the bluff, with cane and pistol, an angry little man whose back was up. But misery loves company, there is true. More than one man clutched me by the arm, swearing, Major, they’ll kill you dead, if’n you go up there . . . sure as the devil, they’ll kill you dead. To hear them tell it all was lost that morning. With no hope of redemption on the field. But I had been a sergeant and knew better. And now I was a major full of hopes. No battle is lost as long as one man stands.

And I was shamed. For I had taken this Union to my heart. More fully than we should love mortal things. I loved its promise of a better life, its goodness to the man who strived, its fairness and its hope, if yet imperfect. Our country took me in when I had fallen, and though I hated war I knew my debt. And there was pride mixed in, the pride of man. I am no gentleman when it comes to losing. Oh, I was hot.

A thousand cowards make a mournful sound. In Bible verse they call it lamentation. It is ignoble, and desperate, and rude to the ear. They might have been the ravished folk of Egypt, those fellows gathered witless by the bank.

Rifles lost and even shoes abandoned. Playing cards and papers strewn about. Pipes cast down. All trampled underfoot. Clean new greenback dollars sailed the breeze and frightened men ignored the dancing money. The earth stank of defeat and bad latrines.

The men behind the bluff had turned to cattle. A single company of Rebels might have taken them all. And not one would have lifted a finger to save himself. Now, you will say, That is a lie, and foolish. A thousand will not give way to a hundred. But you have not seen men as I have seen them. Paralyzed by terror, cripple-souled.

A man with half his teeth laughed as I went. They’ll gobble that little pecker right up, he said. Those hiding in the ditch beside him laughed. One even hurled a stone and struck my back. Men in their shame are desperate, little things.

You would have thought the day was lost, indeed. Streams of men flowed back toward the river, as if the season rained them on the earth. Oh, how they ran. But I am an old bayonet and a veteran of John Company’s fusses, and I listened past their wailing and complaints. The sound of guns and musketry come mighty over the land. For each who fled, at least one stood and fought. There was a battle not yet lost entire.

Men do not see when they are full of fear. They stumbled into me. As if I were but air. Blocked, they stared. Amazed to find themselves in human contact. Then they dropped their eyes and shook and fled. Men and boys. An officer in a uniform of beauty, a captain with a golden sash, ran off. Pursued by devils. And when the officers run, you cannot expect the other ranks to stand. God forgive me, I almost shot him down upon the spot.

But I would have killing enough.

A battery of ours charged through the runaways, shouts and hooves and whips and wheels and dust. Chains chimed under the carriages, and a dangling bucket banged. The gunners rode toward the fray, God bless them. Running down the stragglers in their path. Twas the first bit of sense I encountered. And though I had hard memories of caissons, my heart filled with a malice near to joy. I cheered the cannon on and followed after.

I walked a sorry mile to find the battle, bad leg sore but willing. My cane gored Southron earth beneath the dust. Tents ranked neat stood empty but for looters, hard men dumping bags and chests and field desks. Stealing from their comrades without shame. Even in a battle you hear glass break. It is the pitch, soprano, sharp and thin. Letters strewn about dishonored sweethearts, laying bare the secret thoughts of wives. A cook stood over his kettle with a rifle, as if his troops had just stepped off to drill and he must feed them all on their return. Bugle calls broke off before they finished, and drums beat contrary orders. April flies, oblivious, swarmed and balled.

Closing on the fight my hopes were bolstered. Regiments in order hastened up, jingling as they tramped across the fields. Aroused from rearward camps, they surged expectant, pointed on by officers with swords. Voices strained to command, and blue caps lifted while men wiped their sweat. Couriers galloped in between the groves. Lieutenants with red stripes upon their trousers searched out strong positions for their guns, crashing through the brush on nervous horses. The wounded limped along, those who could walk, helped by comrades glad to quit the line.

I saw few dead at first. Just those torn ragged by an errant shell, or bled to death of wounds as they strained rearward. They lay beside the roads and in the fields. In daunting stillness.

A sutler’s wagon, looted, filled a ditch. With naughty pictures scattered in the weeds amid discarded bottles of camp remedies.

And vexed I was with fears for my old friend, Dr. Mick Tyrone, who served somewhere upon that wretched field. Good it is to have friends near in battle, where you can feel their shoulders against yours. Then you imagine that you will protect them, as they will you. But the friend in another regiment, the comrade out of sight, excites your worry.

A boy with a rifle as big as himself approached me.

Major, he begged, d’you know where the 11th Ioway’s gone to? D’you know the 11th Ioway? You seen ’em? A child he was, afraid to be caught truant.

I did not know and told him that. But then I thought me better.

Come along, lad, I said. We’ll find a fight, if not your regiment.

And so I began to do what I long should have been doing. Rallying those who would heed me. Grabbing boys and turning them around. Snatching rifles from the dust and weeds and slapping them into their hands. Shaming them with looks as much as words. Not all were skulkers, see. Many were but confused. Left by their leaders, scattered from their comrades.

Damn you, I said to a sergeant, for I was one who valued every stripe. Damn you, get up and help me, man. Ready I was to drag him by the beard. But he got up himself, come to his senses.

Some who listened died for it that day. Leaving wives and children hard bereft. That is the soldier’s lot. All those who slight the soldier do not know what he endures while they are safe at home. Why did they follow? I had a major’s shoulderboards. And a sergeant’s growl. Men only want their orders spoken clear.

I pointed into the weeds. Take up those cartridge boxes, I told my growing band. For I judged by the sound we would need them. And get you plenty of caps.

All a soldier wanted could be gathered along that road, thrown down by men who thought to quit the war. "You. You! I seized an ancient musket from a private and thrust a fine new rifle in his arms. That’ll do a proper damage," I told him.

Some began to join our ranks unbidden. One boy ran across a fresh, green field. No one wants to be alone in battle, and men rally to those who show a little pluck.

Of course, there was no order to our march. A grunting mob in uniform we were. But they followed me, full thirty of them now. Some even started in to brag and swagger, mocking those who would not go beside us.

I had put up my Colt and got a rifle. U.S.-issue, fine but for the dust. I must have looked a sight, laden down with cartridge leathers and the long weapon, limping along on my cane. But those boys and men saw naught but my mask of confidence, a sergeant’s trick learned fighting the Pushtoon, when confidence was all that got you through. A major had it easy by compare to the bloody young man I had been.

Bullets stung the air. I tried to sense where we were needed most, but gained no feeling for the battle’s shape. Ahead of us loomed thunder and obscurity.

A riderless horse careened from a grove, seeking sunlight. Animals run from the fighting, see, unless they have been special-bred for viscounts.

Over there, I bellowed. Into the trees. I did not lead but drove them from behind, a sergeant still in soul and skills and bearing. I did not want to see them run again. Oh, two tried. But I smacked them proper with a length of cane. And nearly lost my balance in the doing, for I was loaded like a native bearer. I cursed the slackers, wounding decent English.

Set down like this, all reeks of sense and knowledge. But I was not a thinking man that day. In battle, men survive who learn to act. Thinkers perish, or, at best, they fail. They hesitate, and die. No, I had not the selfhood ink pretends, but was a beast trained by a master’s hand. Forever a creature of the regiment I was, though I had long hoped elsewise. I was, again, the boy in the scarlet coat, streaming with the gore of Chillianwala, and grinning at the slaughter and the triumph. That was Britannia’s legacy to me, brought to my new land as a fateful cargo.

I was not myself upon that field, see. Not the Abel Jones I had constructed across the years I wore no uniform. Not the man I prayed that I might be as I approached the age of thirty-four. Not the loving husband and father, the dutiful Methodist clerk. I fell down. And Jones the Killer rose up like a ghost, bloody as the Kashmir Gate at Delhi.

But let that bide.

Suddenly, we were in it. I pushed forward. The lad beside me wriggled like a caught snake, then tumbled bloody. The scrub wood tangled our feet in roots and briars, tripping us with haversacks and blankets thrown away, with weapons lost and staring corpses. Officers shouted to be heard above the volleys, but their voices only blurred. It was a realm of rifles, with no guns wheeled between the trees as yet, though cannonades resounded on our flanks. Ahead, blue backs stood and knelt and crouched, while officers went rushing to and fro. Men fell.

I marked the weakest portion of the line.

Over there,I ordered. Pointing with my hand and then my rifle. I knew that those remaining would stay by me, the way a soldier knows but can’t explain. I did my best to lead them true and decent.

And now my cane would have to be discarded, although I feared my leg would not hold up. I needed both hands for the rifle, see, and thought to use the weapon as my crutch. Still, I felt a twinge amid the fury, for we have little sense of proper order. My stick was but another scrap of wood. Yet it had been a gift of Christian kindness, carved by honest hands in old New York. I had to let it go, but felt a grief. Well, men lost more that day than Abel Jones. A moment later, I had aimed and shot.

I put my rough platoon in place, back in the trees where we were screened by brambles. We would be hard to see, though not protected. Nor were our enemies set out on display. The Rebels came in rushes, darting out of the smoke. Game those fellows were, but poorly led. Their officers did not know how to mass, or how to make the left support the right. A proper sergeant might have put them straight. But this was not a war of regulars. Now and then, we caught a glimpse of lines, and once a braided fellow waved his cap, riding on a black and prancing horse. But most of it was deadly hide-and-seek.

The lads had been taught to stand and shoot, as all the manuals tell you, but that just made them targets. I had them crouch wherever there was cover. Though not before another soldier fell. A rotted log was all we had to shield us, yet that was more than our charging enemies had. Briars tangled them, and smoke grabbed their flags.

The Rebels thinned away. As if they had been ghosts. A pool of quiet spread before us, while battle roared and screamed on either flank. The boys kept firing till I made them stop.

Reload, and hold your fire, I commanded. Look you, lads. Set your cartridge boxes up beside you. And wait for them to come, for come they will.

Well I knew what such a silence meant. A fresh regiment, perhaps a new brigade, was forming to fall upon us. I scrambled over to the officer nearest, a colonel with his arm in a bloody sling, whose men were pouring fire into nothing. I tried to warn him what was bound to happen, but he only looked down at me, as if I were one of the malingerers under the bluff, and told me to get away. When the attack came, his line was pierced, and only the arrival of a fresh regiment restored our front. The colonel fell at his post.

By then I was back with my lads, giving what encouragement I could.

The Rebels charged screaming and howling, half an army, half a heathen tribe. Unmatched flags swept over a field. That meant we faced two regiments, at least. But we, too, had grown stronger. Soldiers looking for their units had wandered into our line and joined it. Orphaned companies wedged in to shore up battered regiments. We barely had space to load.

Not all paid me heed, for fear was on them. But the stronger among them coiled. I could feel the fierceness in them then. Waiting to spring loose. It is a sense of power that should disgrace us.

I waited until the enemy was snared in the brush and bodies, close enough for us to mark their faces, their eagerness and fury and their dread. Then I screamed, Fire,in a voice gone raw.

A dozen dropped at once before our front. The suddenness stunned their comrades, and they wavered. I ordered the boys to reload and fire at will. That was when they pierced us on the right, where the colonel had dismissed me, but a tide of blue poured through the trees in time. I aimed and shot, more useful thus than barking.

We fired, and they fell, and they fell, and we fired.

Still, we were ordered back. Somewhere, the line had failed. We lost more lads withdrawing than while holding. I saw the bafflement of men who had fought well but must give up the ground for which they bled. Some cursed in spite, while others wept with rage. Myself, I had forgotten my bothered leg, as men will overlook dreadful wounds and keep fighting. There is a wild energy that sweeps you, an opiate to pain and spur to deeds. The devil overtakes us in a battle and fills us with a mockery of joy. You feel that you were never more alive.

The Rebels cheered behind us, but they paused. Their leaders were as new to this as ours and did not know enough to drive us hard.

Oh, we were motley. Sloven. Reloading left our faces black as miners, with powder acrid on our swollen tongues. Trees and smoke consumed troops by the hundreds. The sun was blotted and the heavens stained.

We came into a meadow of green shoots, and I began to understand the ground. The way a veteran suddenly knows a thing. It was no place to make your numbers tell or to sweep grandly round a hanging flank. The landscape broke the battle into fragments and made it but a brawl of split brigades. The ground was queer and crippled brave attacks. Twas as if the Lord had dropped a cloak, its folds become ravines or swales or ridges. Rhymeless stands of trees fringed poor men’s fields. It was a sorry place, though it was warm. I late had felt the rawness of New York. Here all was buds and sprouting leaves. And death.

A fellow got up fine cantered abroad, followed by a brace of staff men.

That’s General Prentiss, one of the lads behind me called, but I knew of none such. And I was one for letting generals be.

You feel the want of water quick enough. When you are drinking smoke and shouting orders. The heat of battle multiplies the sun, and when you are in the thing the smoke wraps you hot and drains you dry as the Balooch deserts. The thirst, too, made me think of India. I longed to call out for my good, old bhisti, with his bag of lovely water and his grin.

I had not planned for battles in my travels, and had brought no equipment save my Colt. I had no water bottle or canteen. So I tugged vessels free of the dead, and had the boys still with me do the same. Scruples fade amid slaughter. And heat will drop a soldier like a bullet.

But there is right and wrong, even in battle. I caught a boy stripping clothing from a corpse. Now taking up cartridges or water is a matter of need, and only practical, but looting must not be permitted. It is a matter of discipline, as much as it is of morals. For the army that grabs dissolves.

I recognized the lad as one of mine, a boy whom I had gathered off the road. He had unruly hair, as I remember. But no one was well combed that bloody day.

I gave him a whack with the stock of my rifle. The barrel scalded my hands.

You’ll leave the dead alone, I told him. Come along.

The boy responded by tugging at the corpse’s legs again.

I slapped him hard. And then he looked at me.

I just want his trousers, he pleaded, with a pitiful look in his eyes. I done shat mine through.

A bullet caught him where his cheekbone bulged. Teeth and brains and blood splashed passing men.

I marched off with a fierce, determined limp. For he who stops to think will think too long.

WE FOUGHT FOR HOURS. In another wood. Ears stunned. Ringing. Aching. The right ear always worse. As if our heads had grown lopsided. And swollen. With the shooting shoulder bruised by the rifle’s kick. Parsing ammunition. Searching bodies for more. Breathing men’s burst guts. Gunpowder scours your nostrils, see. And gives you all the cesspit stink of war. We gagged and fired, eyes to the front. Afraid to look around us or behind. Terrified by the jamming of a barrel. Without the wanted time for proper action. Ripping weapons from the slop of corpses. Even those unscathed were splashed with blood. I had to wipe a boy’s pulp from my face and slap his innards from my tunic’s breast.

That is how we fought. And that is where the wounded burned alive.

Though I would be a Christian man, I strayed far from all righteousness that day. In war a man becomes a raging beast, hating those whom he will never know. And there is pleasure in killing, when the hatred is upon you. That is a secret that soldiers keep from those who keep a gentler watch at home. I would have slain the Rebels by the hundreds, with no thought that each was a man like me. I would tell you that I hate war, and I do, but what I truly mean is something other: I hate what war has taught me of myself.

At times I fear Christ threw himself away.

But that is looking back. That day I fought, and hated with my soul. Fellows who have never tasted battle make up fancies that ennoble us. Scribblers would have us full of thoughts of country, dreaming of wives and home and high ideals, of causes, flags and fidelity. But that is what you think of in your tent, if you are one who thinks of things at all. A warm meal matters more than any motto, and shelter from the rain is cause enough. Battle has its